She placed a hand on the doorknob and shivered, unsure if she was ready to have her suspicions proven correct. With shaking hands, she widened the gap of Henry's door. Taking a breath to reassure herself, she peeked her head around the white door. Relief flooded her system like a soothing balm.

Title: AgonyFandom: Once Upon a TimePairings: None.Rating: TSpoilers: Yes, the last two episodes.Summary: She placed a hand on the doorknob and shivered, unsure if she was ready to have her suspicions proven correct. With shaking hands, she widened the gap of Henry's door. Taking a breath to reassure herself, she peeked her head around the white door. Relief flooded her system like a soothing balm.Author's Note: I don't really like this, but…sorry. A prompt from Tumblr: Prompt: Regina's reaction when she finds out Henry left with Emma. Angst.Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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She ripped the blanket away from her body and raced from the room.

Something was wrong, she could feel it.

It had nothing to do with the phantom pain in her throat or the sweat that clung uncomfortably to her skin. It was a feeling that she felt many times before. Something with Henry. Her son, even if he spit his words at her like a viper waiting to attack. Her bare feet slipped on the carpet at the speed she was running and she had to catch herself on the banister within her reach. Not to be slowed, the woman pulled herself on it to catapult her toward her son's room.

She placed a hand on the doorknob and shivered, unsure if she was ready to have her suspicions proven correct. With shaking hands, she widened the gap of Henry's door. Taking a breath to reassure herself, she peeked her head around the white door. Relief flooded her system like a soothing balm when she spied a child shaped lump beneath the dark covers that her son requested the year prior.

Allowing her body to slump against the door, the woman let out a silent prayer to the Gods for not taking away the one thing that means anything to her anymore.

Just as she turned to leave, she noticed a shadow cast by his bedside table in the corner of the room. The dark woman chuckled lightly. Henry was always reading late at night (not the Storybook, she knew that wasn't in the house anymore) and often he fell asleep with a flashlight shining its artificial light on his face.

She stepped into the room and quietly walked to her son's bed. Reaching over him, she grabbed light and bent down to drop a kiss on his forehead. It was only when he was asleep that her son welcomed any sort of affection from her, and as much as it pained the Mother, most of the time she respected his wish to not be touched by her. The blanket caved under the light kiss of her lips. Confusion crossed her face as she reached out to move the blanket from where her son should be sleeping.

Seeing the pillows and no little boy was a slap in her face by an emotion she had a constant tug-of-war with.

It hit faster than she had time to rein it in.

Agony.

Like a hot poker through her open wounds. It felt worse than when her Mother would beat her, spill her blood on cold stone, and make her clean it up before going to her Daddy to tend to her injuries. It was the fact that someone had left her. She didn't purposely chase him away. Her son willingly snuck out into the night to escape her presence.

Her lips trembled and her mask crumpled under the overbearing weight of her Mother's words in her head.

Love is weakness.

It was, the dark woman agreed as tears stung her eyes. She reached out and picked up the blanket in her free hand and brought it close to her face. She didn't think Cora meant the love of a child. When she adopted Henry, the phrase stabbed through her thoughts and she pushed it away. A child couldn't hate her, and child she loved with all her Motherly being and a child she raised to love her back, couldn't hate her.

But of course the old witch was right.

Love had made her weak.

The woman fell to her son's bed and sobbed into the comforter. Pressing it as close to her without suffocating herself, she felt her heart being shattered once more. Loneliness curled in her chest and wrapped its vines around her lungs to keep her from breathing and it was like having her Mother's hand in her chest.

The ache in her body pinched and she could feel the red hot tears jumping down her cheeks at such a pace that it would have disgusted her any other day, but not today, not tonight. Tonight she was a Mother who's only reason for living ran away to be with his other Mother, his real Mother Henry's voice echoed in her brain.

The Evil Queen wanted to claw itself out of her chest like a demon, the evil other half of her, but the girl, Regina, who saved Snow from the horse, who loved Daniel, who was the apple of her Father's eye, the girl who the two sided woman kept buried for so long, came out. She rose from the body that entombed her and wrapped her warm arms around the broken woman who did her best to protect her from the heartbreak of Daniel's death.

The woman found herself ignoring the demon pressing at the walls of her flesh and accepting the comfort that only the past could bring her.

Lying on the small mattress that belonged to her son, the woman curled into Regina as the past stroked her skin, forcing the evil to stay within where no one, but herself and the woman would feel it. She fell apart under the graceful calmness that Regina carried with her and she hoped that when she woke up, if she could ever scum to unconsciousness, that she wouldn't.

Because it wasn't worth it anymore.

End

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